


Gentlemen Are Always on Time

by FlyingPigPoet



Series: The Old Guard and Their (Good) Demons [4]
Category: Gentleman Jack (TV), Good Omens (TV), Star Trek: Voyager, The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: F/F, M/M, this is gonna get gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:27:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 10,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27467170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlyingPigPoet/pseuds/FlyingPigPoet
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, andromche/anne lister
Series: The Old Guard and Their (Good) Demons [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1872979
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31





	1. The Future is Prologue

On ordinary days, Aziraphael’s routine in his Paris bookstore was slow and leisurely (his best friend would have said deadly boring). Today was not an ordinary day. 

Today an old man in a white suit and cravat walked in, to the tinkle of the bell. The moment he cleared his throat, the only three customers suddenly found that they needed to be elsewhere and left.

“Ah, er, Uriel,” said Aziraphael with some quickly constructed pleased facial expressions. “To what do I owe the, ah, pleasure?”

“Mm. Aziraphel. Really. Did you really think we weren’t going to find out?”

Aziraphael’s face froze. There were just so very many things he was hoping that Upstairs weren’t going to find out about that he couldn’t land on just one. “Sorry, what?”

“Time travel, Aziraphael. The accountants just finished the books for 1841. Well, they’re always so bloody behind. Your trip to the Ukraine? That was entirely unauthorized. You’ve always been unorthodox, Aziraphael, but at least I never thought you a fool. You can’t just go mucking around with time. It can create paradoxes!”

“Well, yes, but that’s just if I go to a time and place I am already in—”

“Yes, of course, but it also causes temporal inversion, because of quantum.”

“I don’t understand—”

“And I don’t have the time, ironically, to explain it to you. Suffice it to say, this planet is just days away from first contact with an alien species who should not have arrived here for another 220 years, when the humans discover warp engines.”

“But w—I only went back a few weeks!”

“And that trip is going to have ripples throughout all four quadrants of the galaxy. I’d say let that be a lesson to you—”

“But how can I fix it?”

“That’s it, Aziraphael, you can’t. You need to find a human to fix it. This is going to require Agency and Free Choice and a human who already believes in aliens. Otherwise we are looking at interplanetary war on scale that could entirely undo Creation.”

Aziraphael gaped, but the angel just snapped, “Fix it!” right before he was taken up in a wave of light.

///

Stardate 5639.4

Voyager’s latest run-in with the Borg had left Captain Katheryn Janeway drained, but also too jumpy to sleep. Neelix’s coffee probably had a part in that. She knew she should heed the Doctor’s advice and drink less during stressful times, but it helped her think faster, and when you were flying at warp speed, seconds could be crucial. 

Still, after he sealed a cut she had gotten when the energy manifold had blown into her forehead, he set his tricorder down and said, “Captain, as the Chief Medical Officer, it is my obligation to advise you to take downtime after a trying mission such as the one we just finished.”

“I know, Doctor, but with the engine room in disrepair—”

“Lieutenant Torres has that well in hand.”

“And Seven-of-Nine needs to be—”

“Captain, you know very well that Commander Chakotay is overseeing Seven’s training. And before you try to argue that someone needs to check on Ensign Kim’s pilot training, let me assure you that Lieutenant Paris has been taking several hours a week to watch Harry in the shuttle simulations. No more arguments. You need downtime.”

“But I have too much energy to do… what? Sit around in my quarters listening to music?”

“Not at all. I recently penned a new holonovel about 19th century England, specifically with you in mind. I believe that is your favorite historical period?”

“Well, yes, that and Renaissance Italy.”

“Mm. Typical of a human. Enlightenment Italians and Romantic Englishmen. Always ethos and pathos at war with each other.”

Janeway smiled. “I prefer to think that we are always attempting to balance our competing instincts. Fine, then. What is the name of this holonovel?”

“I call it ‘The Tenant of Shibden Hall.’ I worked out the concept with Ensign Aimee Wright in Operations. I hope you’ll quite like it. Think 1840s England.”

“Late Georgian/early Victorian era. Interesting. Well, far be it from me not to follow the doctor’s orders.”

The hologram snorted.

Janeway left the med bay smiling despite herself. The Doctor liked to pretend to be grumpy, but she knew he really cared for the crew. It was in his programming, after all.

In her quarters, she replicated a dress, complete with a not-entirely-accurate period corset—no hard stays and not too tight—and petticoats. And she figured the characters wouldn’t care too much if her shoes were sturdier than women might normally wear. She was on her feet too many hours a day to wear flimsy footwear in her off hours. Then she headed to the holodeck and picked the Doctor’s program.

A few hours of frivolous entertainment would be fun. What could possibly go wrong?

///

When Aziraphael apparated just outside Crowley’s shrubbery-surrounded estate, there was a distinct aftershock of sharp sulphur in the air. Well, that wasn’t too surprising. Undoubtedly, the people Downstairs also had Opinions about time travel.

He conjured a small wind to dissipate it and marched through the hedge and up the walkway to front door of the house. Immediately, the door opened, showing Crowley dressed in his finest black suit and cravat. He looked miserable.

“So you’ve heard, I see,” said Aziraphael.

“Heard? You could say that. I’ve only just gone and been knighted, for fuck’s sake! Yes, I suppose you could say I’ve heard!”

“Knighted?”

“To the Unholy Order of the Dark Dominion.”

“Because you helped destroy Creation. Eventually.”

“Yes,” said Crowley sadly. “They said there’s a dukedom in it for me if I can make it stick.”

Aziraphael frowned. “Make it stick? I thought it was a mostly done deal.”

“Emphasis on mostly. We changed time, but it takes a while for the new timeline to gel. Apparently.”

The angel’s face lit up with a smile. “But that’s excellent news!”

“It’s horrible. I don’t know how to stop it from gelling. Think about it, Angel: no more silk cravats.”

“No more tea.”

“No more century-old whiskey.”

“No more books! We have to do something, and my people have given me the key to it. We need to find just the right human, and I know exactly when to go.”

“More time travel? But won’t that make things worse?”

“Do you remember the Black Death? It eventually got so strong that the only way for it to evolve was to get weaker! So making the entire destruction of Creation worse will actually make it better!”

For once, Crowley looked like he actually appreciated his old friend’s unreserved optimism.


	2. Portents

T’Paan had always wanted to explore space. His grandfather had been a famed astrographer, even had a statue in the Vulcan Science Guild. Nebulae fascinated T’Paan in particular, which, in retrospect, probably was his undoing. It was a nebula that lured him light years past his expected solar system and far out to a small solar system with a lone star and just nine planets, but they were beautiful, and one of them clearly had water in some form and might just possibly support life.

And he knew that the atmospheres of some planets could be difficult to get too close to in his little survey ship.

Well, difficult to get too close to and then successfully pull away from.

The turbulence of the beautiful blue planet’s atmosphere rocked his ship back and forth, and he feared it would tear it apart.

Vulcans don’t panic. Vulcans don’t panic. Vulcans don’t panic.

He muttered it over and over, a mantra to keep his mind calm and serene.

A flash of white light filled his viewscreen.

T’Paan panicked.

///

Autumn of 1843 was cold and wet and depressing, typical of English weather. As the Old Guard traveled south toward London, nobody really talked. Anne, in her great coat and top hat insisted on driving, and only rarely let one of the others take the reins to spell her. Inside the carriage, they discussed what had gone wrong in Halifax.

Andy said, “We should never have let her go down and intervene.”

Sebastien shook his head. “Boss, you know how fast she is, and she was on home ground. I told her my story and she still chose to stick her neck out. Not much you can do about it.”

“When we get back to Goussainville, I’ll talk to her,” said Joe.

Nicky moaned a little. “Boss, do you have more of that ginger? Anne’s driving is making me feel a little sick.”

Andy felt around in her pockets and pulled out her wrapped handkerchief. “We’ll need to stop for the night soon. The horses are going to be tired, the way she’s pushing them.” She tried peal the skin off the piece of ginger, but the bouncing of the carriage caused her to cut herself. She swore. “Book, take your turn and get us to a town where there’s an inn. I’m not sleeping in this bloody carriage tonight.”

Book pounded on the wall behind Anne’s seat outside and she pulled the horses to a halt. He got out and she climbed in. Her greatcoat was soggy and her breathing shallow. She took in Andy’s thumb wrapped in a bloody handkerchief and the knife and ginger.

“Problem with my driving?” she asked.

“Yes,” Nicky moaned.

Andy shrugged. “The roads are a mess. What else is new. We need to take a break, rest the horses. You need to get some sleep.”

Anne rubbed her eyes. “Not too likely. I keep seeing Ann, rocking…”

Andy took Anne’s top hat off and held it in her lap. It had the faint scent of Anne and her soap. “It wasn’t your fault, you know.”

Anne wouldn’t meet her gaze.

Joe tried. “People are going to do what they do. You can’t change them.”

“But if we’re… this. Whatever this is. Shouldn’t we be able to make a difference?”

“Just because we’re immortal, doesn’t mean we’re not still human,” said Andy philosophically. “All we can ever do is try. I’ve been trying, and succeeding, and failing for a few thousand years. We’re not gods.”

“Then what are we?” asked Anne exasperatedly.

“Heroes,” said Nicky, looking a little less green with the carriage running a bit slower and more smoothly. “Like Hercules, perhaps.”

Anne considered that. “I don’t feel much like a hero.”

Joe smiled sadly. “Wait a few centuries.”

///

Even in a blinding panic, with his ship on fire and shooting molten sparks as it tumbled through exosphere to thermosphere to mesosphere to stratosphere, T’Paan was a Vulcan and eminently rational. He wrestled the navigational controls to land in what he hoped was dihydrogen monoxide, but close enough to shore that his ship wouldn’t sink. If that happened, and the planet was as backward as he suspected, he would never get home again.

Luckily, he had entered the atmosphere in the northern hemisphere at night. Most creatures who saw his descent would assume he was a shooting star, he hoped.

Vulcans aren’t known for hoping.

The liquid he landed in softened the otherwise incredibly painful collision, and although he could see the green spray of his blood across the navigational console, the droplets were small enough that he didn’t think he was too badly wounded. He would have to clean himself up if he was to attempt to make his way among the planet’s creatures and find or make tools to repair his ship. But first things first.

He managed to reconnect the ship’s emergency Bouyancy Reactant System, and slowly navigated the ship toward an unpopulated piece of coastline, where he could hide the ship in a sandy cove and turn off all systems to save energy.

Then, hoping he was safe enough—

and Vulcans don’t hope—

he collapsed.

///

Henry Scuggins had run the Nottingham Arms for forty years, since his father had died of dropsy, and he had seen some rum guests in his day. But the five men who rolled in just before midnight on the last Friday of October were… different. Henry didn’t talk about it with people he didn’t know very well, but he was the seventh son of a seventh son, and sometimes he got… feelings about folks.

The one who signed them in, S. Liffre, he was cynical and exhausted. The bearded fellow and the thin man leaning on him who was clearly suffering from road sickness, well if those two weren’t buggers, Henry would eat his hat. The man in the top hat who wore mourning, his grief was almost palpable.

But the other one.

Henry had met a man at the end of Napoleon’s war, an English soldier that he would have sworn was a hundred years old, an enigmatic fellow who looked thirty but felt… weary, so terminally weary. Henry had sat drinking ale with him into the night, and when he didn’t check out the next morning, went to look in on him, and found he had died in his sleep. The one they called Andre looked a lot like that. He gave them two keys and they dragged themselves upstairs to the rooms. He put their money in his lock box and scratched his day-old beard, thinking to himself, there’s a story there…

///

At 3:17 in the morning, Anne woke from an incredibly vivid dream, gasping. Andy, who had rolled away, felt her sit up and woke quickly, one of the virtues of a few thousand years of experience.

“What is it?”

“A strange woman, not strange like me, strange like you all, out of her time! She is dressed like the people here, but her heart is dressed like the soldier of a future era!”

Anne panted a bit and then clearly went back in her mind and looked at what she had just said. “I don’t know… what I mean… How strange…”

Andy sighed. “Wait for it.”

“Wait for what?”

“In twenty seconds, the boys will be pounding on our door because they had dreams too, of the same woman. Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen…”

“I don’t understand—”

“Nine, eight, seven…”

A quick rapid knock sounded on their door and Andy jumped up to let the boys in.

Joe had his notebook and pencil and was waving a sketch. Anne looked at it and exclaimed, “But that’s her! How did you know?”

Booker sighed. “We have another one. But she’s not right. There’s something about her…”

“She’s from the future,” said Anne.

“That’s not possible,” said Booker.

Nicky and Joe met each other’s eyes. Nicky murmured, “We really don’t know what is possible, do we?”

Andy tiredly reached for Joe’s sketches of the woman with the strong jaw and direct look. “All right. I’m going back to sleep. Let’s see what I dream. Then we’ll have a better idea of our next steps.”


	3. Meeting Your New Employer

In a room that was not so much a place as a possibility, there were endless rows of shelves, and thickly packed on the shelves were things that strongly resembled hour glasses.

There was a reason for that.

With a click of bone against the rough granite floor, the inhabitant strode forward, looking for the hour glasses that shone silver instead of gold. Those were the ones that were edging toward the sand running out.

Suddenly, there was a flash of light and then a flash of darkness.

WHO ARE YOU TWO?

“Yes, right, about that. We work for—” said the one in a white robe and feathers.

“AH, THEM.”

“Yes, precisely. Now we’ve recently noticed you have a new, er, crew, working for you down, up, er, over there. In the World.”

“I HAVE ALWAYS HAD THE OLD GUARD.”

The dark one hissed, “We need your assssissstanccce. For the ssssake of Creation.”

THAT’S HOW IT IS, IS IT? VERY WELL. YOU MAY BORROW THEM. BUT LET’S NOT MAKE A HABIT OF IT, HM? COULD BE HARD ON ALL OUR REPUTATIONS.

And as they disappeared, he thought he heard the light one say, “You’re too right,” and the other one hiss, “SSSShut up, Angel.”

///

The holonovel program deposited Janeway in the entryway of Shibden Mill, a small inn in Halifax, West Yorkfordshire. The innkeeper, a portly man in a white shirt and stained apron greeted her and accepted her replicated British money in exchange for a room key and a bowl of stew.

She sat eating the hearty stew and quietly watching the men and women (mostly men) around her, sturdy country people with thick accents discussing agriculture, politics and local gossip. She almost jumped when there was a sudden abrupt pause in the conversation. She turned her head to see a… person? in black clothing and a top hat. At first, she thought the vest (waistcoat?) and cravat meant the person was a man, though she wasn’t too sure about historical clothing, but then the person turned that penetrating dark gaze on her.

So. A woman, then. Interesting.

The woman gestured to the bartender and then strode up to Janeway’s table. “Katheryn O’Donnell, I believe? You’re late. I expected you at noon.”

“There is cholera at Whibsey, so we had to make a detour. I am very sorry. Miss Lister, I presume?” She offered her hand.

Anne Lister shook it with energy. 

“Join me?”

Lister sat opposite her and the bartender brought her a glass of red wine. “Mm. Whibsey. Yes, they were dealing with that when I was coming through some weeks ago.” She took a sip of her wine. “You come well recommended. Lady Stuart seemed to think that you would be well suited to be my travel companion on the continent. She said you were fluent in French, decent in German and had read a good deal of science, due to your father.”

“I hope I should prove to be a suitable companion to you, ma’am.”

“Mm. So why have you not married?”

Janeway thought the question odd, although considering the time, maybe not. “I wanted to see the world before I settled down. How can one raise children to be citizens of the world if one has not seen the world?”

Lister frowned, but not, Janeway thought, out of disapproval, more… surprise?

“Citizens of the world… Mm. I like that. I’ve never myself felt compelled to have children. But I agree. A certain… breadth of mind… is necessary to live in the modern world. How are you in a carriage for hours? I had a lady’s maid a while back who was rubbish at traveling.”

“I think you’ll find I can hold my own, ma’am. I have traveled far.” (And privately, Janeway thought, What an understatement.)

“Excellent. Well, come meet me at the hall in the morning. By then, Cordingly will have your room ready and we can look at the maps and make plans. Do you have any Russian?”

Janeway laughed. “Please, thank you and cheers. Maybe friend? And vodka, of course. It’s been a while. My father wanted me to learn, but it is a terrifying language.”

Lister gave a small smile. “It is, indeed. I speak it a little, but reading is altogether impossible.”

“Cyrillic,” sighed Janeway.

“Indeed.”

“Very well. I’ll see you tomorrow at Shibden Hall. I should tell you to expect—”

Red alert sirens drowned her out. Janeway hit the comm badge under her dress. “This is the Captain. What is—”

But then a strobing flash of purple and green light swept across the holdodeck. The walls seemed to melt and the ceiling and floor got closer together and farther away.

“Thiiiis iiiiis the caaaaptaaain. Whaaat iiis—”

And then the ceiling and the floor sandwiched her between them like a rock and a hard place, and she knew no more.


	4. In Search of the Time-Wanderer

When after four days, Andy still hadn’t dreamed of the newest immortal, even though Joe was waking up every morning making sketches of what he and the others dreamt, Booker said, “Well, Boss, there’s always the leftover laudanum from Scotland.”

Anne said, “Laudanum?”

Andy groaned. Joe and Nicky laughed.

“What did I say?” asked Booker.

“Laudanum, or its eleventh century equivalent, was how Quynh and I finally found these two jokers. I was hallucinating for three days.”

“Well,” said Anne judiciously, “Although I do not, as a rule, care for the stuff myself, needs must when the devil rides.”

They stared at her. 

“What?”

Joe patted her on the shoulder. “You English and your way with words. Nicky, you remember old Will, in Stratford? He said the craziest things.”

“Drank me under the table more than once. Writers!”

Booker handed Andy the vial. She sighed, unstoppered it and drank it down. “Yuck. I’ll see you in the morning. Anne, you coming?”

Anne smirked. “That remains to be seen.”

The boys rolled their eyes, as the women went upstairs to their room.

Booker said, “So those two are…”

“Pretty sure they’re not,” said Nicky. “Anne is still upset about her wife.”

“Well, at least she’s getting her groove back,” muttered Booker.

///

T’Paan might have gotten the lowest marks in a century at the Vulcan Academy for Philosophy, Logic 101, Advanced Logic, and Meditation, but he had completely mastered the entire Survival curriculum.

Under his current circumstances, this was just as well.

It was a cold damp planet, but its foremost creatures were bipedal and bioptical, so with a little work, he was able to blend right in. He stole clothes, and a knit hat to hide his ears, and he used his universal translator to understand the news sheets of the day and identify a relatively famous engineer who might have some of the tools he needed to make repairs on his ship.

The problem was finding him.

///

Janeway was drowning in ice cold water that absolutely stank. It was odd how a tiny part of her brain, the part that was always cool and collected even in the middle of mortal combat, could ignore the lack of oxygen in her lungs and the lack of warmth in her limbs, the heaviness of her many layers of petticoats dragging her down to her death. How it noticed something as seemingly minor as the water’s stink.

Her boots were laced, so she couldn’t kick them off and it was all she could do to keep kicking to the surface to gasp for breath. She heard a loud splash nearby and strong arms grabbed her and swam her to the bank. Even as they were meters away, the wake from a nearby boat overcame them and Janeway inhaled water and gagged.

The man dragged her up the bank rolled her on her stomach and pounded her on the back until she coughed the water up and dragged air into her lungs, coughing wetly. It wasn’t a cold evening; it felt like 7 degrees Celsius or in the 40s Fahrenheit, but her dress was soaked through and she felt like an icicle.

She heard shouting, but she just felt so, so tired. The man picked her up and carried her, but the pounding of her heart and the adrenaline in her blood fought for dominance, and she kept losing consciousness.

Eventually, she woke up in a long wide room with many beds in rows and sitting at the foot of her bed were five people she did not actually recognize, but at the same time, they seemed oddly familiar, like figures from a dream.

But the more she looked at them, the more the one with the top hat in his lap seemed like someone she knew…. He had short hair, but the same air of… what?

Groggily, she reached her hand out and coughed, “Lister?”

The man jumped up and took her hand. “Do you own me, Captain?”

“I… what?”

The sad-looking one in a scruffy suit intervened. “You know each other?”

Janeway was dizzy. “I think… maybe we’ve met?”

The one who had the bearing of an officer stood. “You are weary. But the doctor said that they have done what they can for you. Apparently, you swallowed a good bit of the Thames at the end there. We can help you with that. Herbal remedies and a roof over your head, if you like.” Leaning down close to Janeway’s head, she—but wait, weren’t they all men?—murmured, “You are out of your proper time, are you not?”

“Oh. You have no idea…”

“Then come with us if you want to live.”

Behind her? Him? The bearded one muttered, “I always wanted to use that line.”

Janeway clasped arms with the leader. “I’m in.”


	5. Strange Visitors

Fortunately, the weather improved after that. With six people, the carriage was crowded and stuffy. Nicky insisted on Joe doing the driving, and he sat with him out on the front seat. Booker and the new woman, Captain Janeway, sat facing forward. Anne and Andy sat facing back. 

Anne studied the woman with fascination. “I saw you in that unusual uniform. What exactly are you a captain of? And is it common for a woman of your time? And when is your time?”

“Ah,” said Janeway slowly. “Our Prime Directive is not to interfere with new societies we come across, and that includes maintaining the timeline. I cannot interfere with history. Anything I tell you about the future could cause a paradox which might cause that future to cease to exist.”

“Well, that sucks,” said Booker.

Anne frowned. “Booker, don’t be vulgar.”

Janeway added, “That doesn’t keep you from telling me anything you know.”

“A very uneven dynamic,” said Booker. “Wouldn’t you say? Why should we trust you?”

“You came looking for me. One moment I was… enjoying some well-earned recreation and the next, I was taking a swim in a sewer.”

Anne said laconically, “Actually, it was the Thames, but it’s an understandable mistake.”

“So this is London? Nineteenth century? Who is the king or queen?”

“Victoria,” said Booker. “Interesting lady. We’ll see if she’s any good.”

Andy said, “We are a group of immortals, more or less. Warriors.” She watched Janeway not react. “Most people get unnerved right about now in the conversation.”

Janeway shrugged. “I’ve seen some pretty odd things in my career. And my people have heard about time travel before and… cultures… with immense lifespans. This is just one more new thing, or two, I suppose.”

Booker asked, “Did you die? In the water?”

Now Janeway stared at him. “Not that I noticed.”

“We think you might be one of us,” said Andy.

The carriage came to a halt. Nicky and Joe handed the ladies down from to the cobblestone street. Joe said, “Time for dinner. I’ve been in this tavern before and it—”

He was cut off by an enormous bolt of light from the sky, east over the bay.

“Lightning?” asked Andy, shielding her eyes.

“No,” said Janeway with absolutely no doubt in her voice. “That was a small starship, ditching.”

///

William Henson had lived in Lambeth for several years now, plying his trade as an engineer by day and tinkering by night. As a lad, he had always been fascinated by birds, the dreamlike perfection and symmetry of their feathers and wings. He had studied with a man years before who had found a dead seagull and mapped out how the different sizes and shapes of the feathers worked together to make a wing and had also dissected a bat for similar reasons, comparing bone structures between the two species.

William wanted to fly then. The difference was now he was so much closer to elucidating the principles of flight, and more importantly of gliding, since fixed wings would be much easier to build and control, he thought.

Just the year before he had built a light-weight steam engine. It was still bigger and heavier than he wanted, but for its size it was powerful. He had a few patents, and from time to time, educated men would come to ask him questions about his work. So it wasn’t entirely out of the ordinary when a young man politely approached him at the pub and asked him if they could speak.

Like most experts, Henson was always ready to discuss his field and his pet projects. It did disturb him that the young man looked a little jaundiced, or possibly as if one of his grandparents had been a Chinaman. But he was obviously an accomplished engineer who understood the things Henson described with great ease, and even asked about future applications of his work, with ideas even bigger than Henson had ever dreamed. So when the young man reached into his pocket and found his wallet had been lifted, Henson had no problem paying for his dinner and then walking the man back to the shed behind his little house. Finally, he had found a collaborator who could keep up with him.

///

The night of the bright light had been a busy one for the team. Janeway had borrowed a piece of foolscap and a pencil from Anne and calculated the trajectory of the small starship. Anne had pulled out her map of London & Environs. Janeway pointed at an inlet.

“Kent,” said Anne. “The River Medway?”

“That’s where I would put in if I could. It would offer protection from weather.”

Joe said, “I don’t suppose we could get a bit to eat before we—”

Andy and Anne gave him competing Looks.

“Yeah, no, Joe,” said Nicky kindly.

So they drove the carriage southeast until they reached the edge of the river. A trail of luminescent chemicals on the surface of the water was already starting to disperse, but it led them to the cove and the alien ship.

“Vulcan,” said Janeway to no one in particular. “Nineteenth century Earth time. So he’s out of place but not out of time. That’s something at least.”

“What’s a Vulcan?” asked Andy. “And don’t give me disrupt the timeline horseshit.”

Janeway sighed. “A species from another planet that isn’t supposed to make First Contact with humans for another two centuries, when we will be far more ready than you are right now. They are bipedal, like humans, a friendly, logical race. It would be much worse if they were… But we need to find, well, him, I assume. It took them a bit longer to let their women…”

One set of footprints led away from the ship. Andy studied them and finally said, “Joe and Nicky, you stay here. Make sure no humans find this… thing. The rest of us will find its driver.”

“Pilot,” said Janeway absently. “Yes, he’s going to be even more lost than I am.”

///

The Whistling Pig would not have been Alistair Crowley’s first choice for a name if he were going to name a pub. Something more like The Marauding Dragon or The Throne of Swords came to mind almost immediately. But Aziraphael’s argument that at least three of the Old Guard had met the angel before had merit. They needed to intervene with the group soon if they were to be successful in preventing the timeline from gelling, and taking on new personae while also changing time would require excess energy.

So Crowley put on some foul-smelling clothes and convinced the pub’s current barkeep that he needed a night off, and Crowley was more than willing to step in to earn “a few extra quid to keep the missus happy.” 

In terms of stretching his persuasive skills, this one was nowhere nearly as hard as convincing the first human woman to eat an apple or convincing Pope Urban that killing thousands of Saracens would gain him heaven.

To be fair, Eve had been a much harder sell than Urban. Humans.

Tonight, he saw the four of them enter the bar looking tired and worried. The man waved the others to find a table and came up to the bar to order two beers, a Madeira and a glass of red wine and whatever they could get to eat (Shepherd’s pie, although to Crowley’s disgust, there were no actual shepherds in it). 

Crowley pulled the beers first, saying, “New in town?”

“Yeah.” The man’s eyes scanned the people in the bar restlessly.

“Saw another new fellow this evening. Foreigner, apparently. Dressed funny. Pretended he had his wallet nicked and the engineer nob took him off home to take care of him.”

The man’s eyes returned to Crowley’s, but clearly couldn’t focus on him properly, because of the miasma of smoke Crowley kept between his snake eyes and everyone else in the establishment. “Really?”

“Some people are right gits, you know.” He pushed the two glasses of beer forward on the bar and pulled down two more glasses. “That young odd fellow probably is going to take him for all he’s got.”

“Foreign how? Odd how?”

“He looked a little green around the gills. Not as if you can see nought in this place. Still.” 

The man looked thoughtful as he counted out his money.

“Yeah,” said Crowley. “Them Lambeth nobs is all the same. Stupid as fuck. The boy’ll bring yer food to yer table.” He scooped up the man’s money and turned away.

Easy, as his best friend would say, peasy. But then, Crowley had been persuading humans of things, both true and false, for thousands of years. At this point he was quite literally an old pro.

///

Nicky and Joe sat on a rock just outside the cove that hid the “starship” that the “Vulcan” had “ditched.”

They had lived for almost a full millennium, and every few decades, they’d had to learn not just new languages, like French, Russian and English, but also new vocabulary for the bizarre and/or novel realities that their immortalities or the modernizing world engendered.

Sometimes it could be exhausting. Sometimes, like now, it could be fairly fascinating.

“Think of it, Joe. People living on other planets. The Earth isn’t so alone as we thought!”

“Sure. Makes sense. If humans are the peak of Allah’s creation, I would be very disappointed.” He thought about that. “I have been very disappointed.”

“Me too.”

“But Miss Janeway says that there are whole species that are friendly and don’t want to go to war just because of difference. That’s what astonishes me.”

“Well, we lived with that dog for years in Malta. That’s a friendly species,” pointed out Nicky.

“But sapient species, Nicky! Not dumb beasts, however affectionate. People who have the means to make war and choose not to.”

“Do you think humans will ever get there?”

“If this Janeway is any proof, they, I mean, we. We have.”

“I want to look at this ‘starship.’”

“Pretty sure Andy will have our hide if we break in.”

Nicky grinned. “What can she do about it? Kill us?”


	6. Making Discoveries

Booker drove the carriage over the Westminster Bridge to Lambeth. The women kept their noses to the windows, looking out for a pair of men conversing under the gas lamps. Anne said that if she were going to talk with a total stranger in Lambeth, she would probably go to the Lambeth Palace grounds, and indeed when they got there, they saw two men, the younger one wearing a working man’s clothes, and the older a suit. Andy rapped on the front wall of the carriage and Booker halted and hopped down and handed them out. 

As they strolled closer, they saw that the older man was clearly human, but even in the inadequate illumination, they could see why the pub’s bartender might think the younger fellow was odd, gaunt and a little bit sallow, with a knit cap pulled down over his ears.

Janeway nodded. “Vulcan.”

“So that’s an alien, is it?” murmured Anne.

Andy sighed. “Apparently? This is new for me, too.” She stopped walking suddenly and Booker almost walked into her.

“Sorry, Boss. What’s wrong?”

Andy rubbed her eyes wearily. “Nothing. It’s just… I am impossibly old. A few years ago, I would have said that I’d seen everything. And suddenly…” She waved her hand at the two men. “All this.”

“How do you want to do this?” Anne asked.

Booker smiled, patted his pockets and took out a battered cigar. “I’ve got this.”

He ambled over to the men and spoke to them. The older man searched his pockets and came up with something that flashed a small flame, which Booker leaned into with his cigar.

“Hm,” said Anne. “Those new matches. I must look into that.”

They spoke some more, and the younger man’s body language became uncomfortable. Then the two men shook hands and the older gave the younger his card and turned and walked away. The younger man followed Booker back to the women.

Janeway turned to him with her right hand in front of her chest, palm facing out, her paired fingers making a V. “Live long and prosper,” she said. Then with a saucy glance at Andy, she said, “Come with us if you don’t want to corrupt Earth’s historical timeline.”

And T’Paan, for the first time in more than a dozen Earth hours, felt a sense of relief.

///

Nicky and Booker paced around the alien ship. It was oval-shaped, almost like a turtle shell, a dark copper color, pitted and scarred, with two short up-curved wings. Lines marked out sections, but none of them seemed to indicate a door or windows. The whole thing was maybe twenty feet long, fifteen feet across and twelve feet high.

“This fellow flew around in this? I’d hate to be stuck in a box this small,” said Joe. Neither one of them mentioned Quyhn.

“What do you think space is like, Joe?” asked Nicky.

“Dunno. Maybe warm when you get near the sun and colder as you get away from it?”

“But Miss Janeway said there are other suns…”

Joe shrugged. “There aren’t any door handles or hinges on this thing. How does he get in and out?”

“Well, if coming down in a fireball is a common event, they’d burn off, wouldn’t they?”

“I wonder what it’s like flying around the stars…”

Nicky said, “Probably it’s like when we look at the night sky in the desert, but from much closer up. I imagine it’s glorious.”

“But lonely, traveling all alone.”

“Like Andy used to do.”

And Joe nodded, and neither one of them spoke it aloud, but both felt the deep and abiding gratitude that they had always had for each other.

///

When the rough-looking fellow had ambled up to them, gesturing with an odd brown stick, T’Paan had panicked. Then the engineer had pulled out a small box and lit the end of the stick. There was the smell of sulphur, and then a more organic smell, with smoke. T’Pann relaxed again.

Then the fellow had turned to him, looked him right in the eye and said, “Aren’t these newfangled matches great? Straight from the forge of Vulcan.” And he rubbed the tip of his ear and raised an eyebrow as he said it.

T’Paan felt exposed. No one on this planet could possibly recognize his species. Vulcans had never been here before. Unless this fellow was also an off-worlder? He certainly looked human. But then, other species often said that Romulans looked like Vulcans. Still this had to be investigated. But just as he was scrambling for a way to bring this fellow away from the human engineer, the fellow said, “Terrible bad luck about Her Majesty’s survey ship sinking off the coast of Gibraltar.”

T’Paan decided to let his panic show. “Oh no! That is terrible. I knew a man on that ship! Were there any survivors?”

“Quite a few, I think, though gravely injured. There should be a list outside the post office.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know the way.” T’Pann turned to the engineer. “I’m so sorry, but I need to look into this!”

The engineer shook his hand and gave him a little square card. “Of course, you must. But perhaps you can look me up and we can speak further.”

“Very kind of you.”

The engineer strolled away. The other fellow said amiably, “I have some friends I think you are going to want to meet.”

///

As the Old Guard drove back to the cove, the Vulcan explained to Janeway the problem of his crash and the damage to his impulse engines, and they got into a very complex discussion with many nouns and verbs that went right over Andy’s head. Even Booker and Anne looked lost.

Finally, Anne turned to Andy and said quietly, “This looks like something we can’t help with, so I suggest we spend our own time more productively. I’ve had some thoughts about how I might help you search for your friend. It seems only fair. Englishmen did this to you. I must attempt to make up for that grave disservice.”

As ever, Andy was mesmerized by those fiercely intelligent brown eyes. She hadn’t felt like this for decades or more. “How?”

“We’ll need a small ship and a bit of a crew. Navigational charts. A winch. A chain, quite long, and a very large, strong magnet.”

“A magnet,” Andy repeated.

“Mm. From what Booker has told me, you’ve been trying to search yourselves, with your bodies, and you’ve all drowned a few times because of it. But, as much as I hate to admit it, we live in the age of machines.” She glanced at Janeway and the alien. “Queen Marie of Denmark advised me to embrace the future. Machines are the future. We are Homo Faber, man who makes. We must make the tools we need to find your friend.”

Andy felt a warm rush of gratitude that this polymath was taking up Andy’s cause as her own.

Yes, that’s what it was. Gratitude. Surely.


	7. The Right Tool for the Job

T’Paan brought Janeway to the side of his ship, pulled a remote control from his pocket, typed in a code, then stared at the door for about fifteen seconds. With a whoosh, a section of the ship rose like a hatch.

“Is that a telepathic failsafe?” asked Janeway. “I’ve only ever heard of them.”

“All the survey ships have them now for situations just like this one,” said T’Paan. He entered first, navigating around some broken bulkhead material. Burn marks ran up the side wall near the navigational computer. “I’m going to have to rewire that. Do you think they have copper wire here?”

“I’m sure of it. Probably you can get some through that engineer you were talking with, since he gave you his card. What kind of tools do you have?”

T’Paan pushed aside some hanging wires and pulled a toolbox out of a cabinet. He showed Janeway his tools, murmuring, “I suppose from your point of view, these are primitive…”

“Not at all. Just simple. But Earth humans have been using hammers for thousands of years. Simple is useful. Some of these are classic. We’ll be just fine.”

“My welder needs to be charged by this ship’s computer, so if we can’t get the computer up and running on whatever charge we have left, that’s it.”

Janeway patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. I never go anywhere without a… multi-tool.”

That didn’t really make T’Paan feel any better, and he was also distracted by her hand on his shoulder. Because, yes, he was a Vulcan and a telepath, and his people used very little physical intimacy as a rule, particularly with strangers. But he had also been alone on this survey ship for two years now. The woman’s small touch made him feel a little… less lonely.

He pointed to the problem with the impulse engines at the back of the ship and she went and started taking the engine apart while he took his welder and went to work on the navigational computer. It was good to have help.

///

Booker sat next to Anne on the front of the carriage as they rode into London proper. She drove, which seemed to make her very happy, but if you had to ride while she was driving, you really wanted to be up front. At least there you only got the bumps she was willing to put up with herself. He looked at the list Janeway had written out for him on the back of the scrap of paper where she had calculated the alien’s descent. Anne had added what she thought they would need to find Quyhn, and then Joe had added his own needs. It was an… unusual list, to be sure.

Fishing boat with winch  
Strong chain, ~30 yds  
Magnet, large, strong  
Copper wire, at least nine strands, 20 meters (yards)  
Delicate pliers, needle nose  
Navigational charts, English Channel  
Rice, 1 lb.  
Tomato  
Eggs

They had agreed to break up the tasks. He would get the hardware and she would get the charts and food. He dropped her off at the premises of A. Fell, Bookseller, then took the carriage to the docks. There was a pub not far from the West India Docks where he knew a fellow, the kind of fellow who could get you anything with a little time and a little money and a little… ingenuity.

///

Nicky and Andy sat on the dry sand poring over their map of England’s south coast, which they had marked over the decades with all the places they had looked for Quyhn’s iron maiden, first close to the coastline and then gradually further out. Joe kept one ear on their conversation while he wandered along the tree line, looking for dry wood.

Andy had been close to despair just about the time they had all started dreaming about Anne, and Joe had taken the long journey their search necessitated as a golden opportunity to distract her for a few months, get her back on an even keel. And to an extent, it had worked. Andy was at her best when she was in a position to get results, make a difference in the world. A seventy-year-long mission with failure after failure would be wearing for anybody.

Well, then again, seventy years, if you were just anybody, would be a lifetime. So. That.

Anne had explained her theory about the Channel changing over the years, explaining about her experiences with the Red Beck, a small river that passed through part of her estate. Its banks changed over the years, building up here, wearing away there. When summers were dry, it became shallower. In stormy years, it became deeper. When a man went missing one winter, they dredged the nearby Calder River and never found him, but then then the next summer, that river went down and the body came loose from the branches that had held it down. 

“Water isn’t static, Boss,” said Nicky. 

“I know that!” snapped Andy.

“You know it because you know the Black Sea, which is static, and you know the rivers you have sailed on or crossed, because they’re different. But Anne writes everything down, and she has for years, and that’s a depth of knowledge and reading about all these things that we just don’t have.”

Andy sighed, running her fingers over all the carefully penned x’s on the map. “Do you really think she can succeed where we failed?”

He shrugged. “I think she was sent to us for a reason. It might be this.”

Joe watched Andy’s slumped form take on a little hope. At least now they would be trying something different. That had to be a good thing, right?

///

Janeway had rolled the sleeves of her dress up above her elbows, but still by the end of that afternoon, she was covered with grease. Still, by setting her phaser to the narrowest beam possible, she had been able to weld some finicky bits of the cracked engine casing back together. Fortunately, the deuterium fusion reactor had been undamaged, but the cracked casing had led to the overheating that had been T’Paan’s undoing.

She tucked her phaser back into the pocket of her dress and wiped her hands off on a greasy cloth, which really didn’t help much. She stretched and went forward to see how the Vulcan was faring. His borrowed Earth clothes were a little neater than hers, but not much.

“I’m done,” she said. “The shielding should hold at least long enough for you to get back to your own system.”

“That was remarkably efficient. You have my gratitude.”

“You’re welcome. Now I’m going to try to clean up before the boys make dinner.” 

She stepped down from the ship and went to the water’s edge, scrubbing the wet sand between her hands to get the grease off. She saw Joe depositing a small batch of twigs and thin branches in a pit he had dug. She stood and joined him. 

“That’s not going to make much of a fire,” she said.

“I know, but high tide was pretty high and finding dry wood…” He shook his head disgustedly.

“And wet wood smokes,” said Janeway drying off her hands on her skirts. “Tell you what. I’ll help you look. More hands make lighter work.”

He rolled his eyes. “You’re starting to sound like Anne.”


	8. I Can Show You…the English Channel

By the time T’Paan had finished his work, the young yellow sun was starting to set, but he could still see Nicky finishing gutting a fish and Andy staring glumly at the map he had seen them discussing. The others were nowhere to be seen. He walked over.

“They call you boss. This is an honorific denoting your leading status in the group, is it not?”

“Hm? Yes, I suppose. I go first into battle, if that’s what you mean.”

“Then it would be appropriate for me to extend my thanks for your group’s help to you. I wonder if there is something I can do for you to clearly show you my gratitude. What are you attempting to achieve?”

“Seventy or so years ago, a mob accused my… my friend of witchcraft, encased her in an iron casket and tossed her into the sea. I’m trying to find her casket.”

“Very well. Bring your chart and we’ll go look.”

Andy stared. Then she hopped up and followed him to his ship.

Nicky yelled, “Hey, Boss. Where are you going?”

“Don’t worry. We’ll be right back!”

They were in the ship in seconds and the hatch closed behind them with a whoosh and a click. T’Paan gestured to a chair molded into the side of the wall behind the chair he took and started moving sliders and twisting dials. The ship rose up and Andy grabbed her seat in shock.

“Do not be alarmed. I will not require speed to do this survey. Give me your chart.”

Andy stretched her arm as far as she could to hand it to him without actually standing up.

He studied it and turned the ship south. “Have your people achieved flight yet?” he asked. 

“Yet? Uh, no. Not yet.”

“Excellent. Then we will not require to run lights. Can you calculate the volume of iron of this casket?”

“Not me. Mathematics was Joe and Booker’s field. Big enough to hold a grown woman?”

“Very well. Scan is underway.”

They flew through the dusk along the British coastline. Andy judged they might be a mile above the ocean, and she tried to appreciate the view and not let the knowledge throw her. For three hours they flew west across the water and then turned and swept back east, but a quarter mile further south. Finally, he said, “I have catalogued the skeletons of old ships and their iron accoutrements, but this is the closest I have yet seen to what you describe.”

And in a side… window-thing… tiny pinpoints of light outlined what looked very distressingly familiar, a body-shaped casket. “Sweet Artemis, you found it! Now all we need to do is mark the place on the map and get that boat and the magnet that Anne was—”

But T’Paan simply clicked some buttons and she heard an oddly mechanical sound and he turned the ship back the way they had come. “Retrieval complete.”

“Wait. What?”

“My ship is equipped with tractor capabilities.”

“Wait, like a horse and plow?”

“I do not know the word horse. And I don’t think my understanding of plow applies here.”

Andy felt the ship descending into the cove where a small fire illuminated her friends standing around arguing. T’Paan landed the ship. The hatch rose and Andy strode out. Immediately, Janeway turned on her.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing? This could change history! You might cause me to cease to exist! And you could have been seen! Do you have any idea what kind of a panic that might cause?”

T’Paan said calmly, “We ran no lights. Your moon is not yet visible in the sky. And our mission was successful. I ran a thorough biochemical assessment of your waterway and we retrieved the iron casket your people were looking for.”

He pointed to the long black boat-like shape clinging to the bottom of the port wing. With a click of his remote control, the thing dropped with a solid thud.

Joe and Nicky groaned. “That’s, that’s only…” said Nicky.

“The front half,” said Joe. “She’s not there.”


	9. .019685 inches/year x 93 years = 1.830705 inches

Booker strode over with Anne right behind him. Andy followed slowly, in a daze. Anne bent down, looking at the six-foot-long monstrosity, with the little barred window, grimacing. She reached out and touched the broken hasp along the side and her narrow fingers came away smeared with wet rust.

Andy asked, “So she finally broke free?”

Booker said, “Maybe. Maybe not.”

Anne looked thoughtful. “They’ve studied this a bit with shipwrecks. Apparently iron rusts approximately .O197 inches a year in seawater (it’s actually a bit less than that, but let’s round up). So, how long has she been gone?”

“Ninety-three years,” said Nicky sadly.

“And two and a half months,” added Andy.

Anne waved a hand. “Point oh two times ninety-three equals one point eight six inches. More than enough to rust through the lock and hasp and hinges as well.”

Janeway said, “This was an enormous error!”

“I’m pretty sure my calculations are correct, if a bit inexact,” replied Anne, wiping the rust off on her pantleg.

“That’s not what I—”

And then Janeway disappeared. The rest of them gaped.

The alien said, “Is this a common form of transportation on your planet?”

Booker shook his head. “She explained time rifts, but this doesn’t look like that.”

Joe said, “She didn’t think she was one of us. Maybe somebody sent her to us to solve these things and then they brought her back to them?”

“Let’s hope so,” said Nicky, worry lines appearing on his forehead. “You know she was worried that we might cause her to cease to exist in the future.”

Anne said, “If she ceased to exist, then she couldn’t have come from the future to help us.”

Booker said, “My head hurts.”

“T’Paan,” said Andy. “Thank you for your help retrieving this horrible thing. And giving me hope.”

“But surely your friend is dead? I assumed that you wanted to retrieve the body so that it might be interred according to your people’s custom.”

“Um, yes. Yes, we did. But burial at sea, with the body shrouded in linen, not caged, is also a reasonable, er…”

“Anne can lead the prayers here,” said Nicky quickly. “And we can be sure she will rest in peace.”

“Ah,” said T’Paan. “That is quite reasonable. Well, I must be on my way.” He raised his hand with his paired fingers making a V. “I have learned much in my time here. Farewell. Live long and prosper.”

They made the gesture back to him. He nodded to them, walked into his ship. The hatch descended and they backed away. The ship rose into the night sky and zipped away. They watched in silence for a minute or two, the only sound the ripple of the sea starting to come in and the ripple and pop of the fire. Then there was another sound.

Andy’s stomach rumbled.

“Oh, right. I missed dinner during my little… side-trip. Do we have anything left over?”


	10. Ch. 10: A Whole New World

Crowley was puttering around his estate in southern France, whispering threats to the shrubbery surrounding it so that they would grow in pleasing shapes and not like an unholy mess. He reserved unholy messes for his work life.

Which was, as it happened, just as well.

He was used to having his damned soul sucked into hell every few centuries or so, but it never got easier with practice.

As he had explained to Aziraphael, “Imagine getting sucked into the devil’s arse-hole, which is lined with burning sandpaper—”

“High-grade grit?” asked the angel.

“What? Yes, of course. Diamond grit. And thorns. And lava.”

“Oh, my. That does sound rather tiresome.” (It should be noted that the Dynamic Duo had spent the better part of the last six thousand years in and around the British Isles, so they were prone to extreme understatement.)

“Exactly.”

The sulphur-infused fart that accompanied his expulsion into the deepest pit of the devil’s dominion was simply adding insult to injury, but that was just Hell’s way. Crowley didn’t take it personally.

“Crowley!” howled Hastur, the Demon of Perpetual Damnation and Dead Snails in Your Salad.

“Um, yes, my Lord?”

“You have failed!”

“But, but, it should have worked!”

“We are stripping you of your knighthood in the Order of the Dark Dominion!”

“Oh no! Please, please, please, don’t do that!”

It went on for a while before they finally let him go back up to Earth. He knew he would have to get rid of this particular Armani suit. You could never get the smell out.

He hurried to the bookstore in Paris, and three doors away, he could already smell the incense. He turned into an alley to puke before hurrying into the store.

One of the good things about their friendship was that their smells tended to cancel each other out.

Aziraphael was sitting behind the counter, looking rather dazed. He also wore a white satin sash from left shoulder to right hip over his cream-colored wool suit and ivory cravat.

“I think…” said Aziraphael slowly. “I think…”

“Yes?”

“I need a drink. Or twenty.”

Crowley pulled a bottle out of his back pocket, which could never have contained it. “Good thing I came prepared,” he said.

///

In a room that was not so much a place as a possibility, there were endless rows of shelves, and thickly packed on the shelves were things that strongly resembled hour glasses.

There was a reason for that.

With a click of bone against the rough granite floor, the inhabitant strode forward, looking for the hour glasses that shone silver instead of gold. Those were the ones that were edging toward the sand running out.

Suddenly he heard a loud SPROING! and turned. On the opposite shelf stood an hourglass that had not been there before and that had on its top half a second bell-shaped glass bell full of sand. It sparkled octarine, the color of magic, that weirdly eye-watering color somewhere between green and purple.

Standing next to it, wearing a cowled black robe like his own, but much smaller, a rodent skeleton tapped its claw experimentally against the hourglass, causing it to ring like a small bell. It turned to look at him and squeaked.

“APPARENTLY, YOU ARE CORRECT. THE TROUSERS OF TIME HAVE COME TOGETHER AGAIN. JANEWAY IS BACK IN HER CORRECT TIME.”

There was another series of squeaks from the robed rodent.

“WELL, NOT TOO TERRIBLY DIFFERENT. CAUSALITY HAS HAD THREE HUNDRED YEARS TO HEAL THE TIMELINE BY THE TIME SHE RETURNED.”

A questioning squeak.

“THAT REMAINS TO BE SEEN. WE WILL KEEP AN EYE ON THEM, AS ALWAYS.”

The rat patted the oddly shaped hourglass and squeaked some more, sounding philosophical.

“THOSE TWO? OH, YES, I EXPECT WE’LL BE HEARING FROM THEM AGAIN. THEY ARE QUITE ADEPT AT GETTING INTO… SHENANIGANS.”

The rat hopped up on his shoulder and he went back to picking out expiring hourglasses. After all, there was work to be done.


	11. Epilogue

Captain Kathryn Janeway spent a good deal of her first six months back on Earth doing the Federation’s World Tour. She and her ship had been touted as a miracle, which practically drove her crazy. They had succeeded at getting home to Earth in one-tenth the time that had been predicted largely because she had followed Starfleet protocols, year after year after year.

So now, walking into this Intergalactic Woman of the Year Award wearing her dress uniform, she felt both annoyed and pleased. She was annoyed because Starfleet was doing that “great (wo)man” version of history rather than recognizing the enormous role the Voyager’s crew had played in the effort of getting the ship and crew millions of light years from the Delta to the Alpha Quadrant. She was pleased because she was walking in with her spouse. 

The President of the United Nations Women’s Commission strode forward to shake their hands. “Captain Janeway, I can’t tell you what an honor it is to finally meet you!”

“The honor’s all mine,” said the captain with a firm handshake.

The woman turned. “And Mrs. Janeway! Congratulations!”

“It’s Ensign Janeway,” said Seven of Nine. “But thank you. It’s still very new for both of us.”

“Let me introduce you to the Secretary General…”

And as the evening went on with speech after speech, Captain Janeway kept thinking that there was something she really needed to remember, but for the life of her, she couldn’t think what it might be.

Finis


End file.
